Category: Procedures & Services

CBC interviewer fails to ask tough questions

Sean Murphy*

A bill has been introduced in the Canadian Senate by Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth to legalize physician assisted suicide and euthanasia.  Bill S-225’s definition of of “assist”  is of particular interest.  It means  “to provide the person with the knowledge or means to commit suicide, or to perform an act with the intent to cause the person’s death.”   Consistent with this, an “assisting physician” is one “who provides assistance” to a patient seeking euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

This indicates that indirectly facilitating suicide even by providing information for that purpose is equivalent to more direct forms of assistance, like providing a lethal prescription.  Further, it implies that both providing information to facilitate suicide and actually killing someone are of comparable legal or moral significance.  Many physicians and health care workers who object to assisted suicide and euthanasia would agree, and, for that reason, would refuse to refer or otherwise help a patient find someone willing to kill him or assist him in committing suicide.

The point was overlooked during an interview of Senator Ruth by Evan Solomon on CBC Television’s Power and Politics (2 December, 2014).  After discussing the contents of the bill in general terms and asking Senator Ruth about her reasons for introducing it, Solomon raised the issue of conscientious objection:

Evan Solomon:  A doctor might be watching this, and say, you know, “Great piece of legislation. What do you do if, what will you do to me if I don’t want to do this?”

Senator Ruth:  Nothing.  No doctor is coerced to do this, no patient is coerced to do this.  This is about choice.  The choice of doctors who want to assist in it and their protection . . .

Solomon failed to ask the tough questions.  Among them:

  1. If physicians will not be forced to kill patients, will they, nonetheless, be forced to help patients find someone who will?
  2. Why is it that the bill is about the choice and the protection of doctors who want to help to kill patients, and not about the choice and protection of those who refuse?
  3. When abortion was legalized, politicians and activists promised that no physician would be forced to provide abortions, but refused to include a protection of conscience provision in the law.1  Now the College of Physicians of Ontario is proposing a policy that would compel physicians to provide abortions or help  patients obtain them.2  Dr. Marc Gabel, chair of the working group that produced the draft policy, warns that physicians who refuse to do this should get out of family practice.3  As written, the policy could be applied equally to euthanasia and assisted suicide.  Why does Senator Ruth think that objecting physicians will not be coerced – if not sooner, then later?

Notes:

1. Murphy, S.  “Promises, promises.  Canadian law reformers promise tolerance, freedom of conscience:What happens after the law is changed is another story.” Protection of Conscience Project

2. “Ontario physicians to be forced to do what they believe to be wrong:  Draft policy demands that objectors provide or refer.  Policy would apply to euthanasia, if legalized.”  Protection of Conscience Project news release, 10 December, 2014

3.  Swan, M.   “Catholics doctors who reject abortion told to get out of family medicine.” The Catholic Register, 17 December, 2014.  (Accessed 2014-12-19)

 

 

Belgian court grants killer rapist the right to be put to death after he argues he cannot overcome his violent sexual impulses

Frank Van Den Bleeken wants to end years of mental anguish

Will commit medically assisted suicide at jail in Bruges this week 
It comes 12 years after Belgium’s euthanasia law was introduced

Daily Mail

Mail Foreign Service

A rapist and murderer is to be put to death in Belgium, despite the EU ban on the death penalty, after a court granted him the right to euthanasia.

Frank Van Den Bleeken argued that he had no prospect of release because he cannot overcome his violent sexual impulses and wants to end years of mental anguish.

Van Den Bleeken, 51, will commit medically assisted suicide at a prison in Bruges this week. [Full text]

 

Conscientious objection to abortion: Catholic midwives lose in Supreme Court

UK Human Rights Blog

The Supreme Court recently handed down its judgment in an interesting and potentially controversial case concerning the interpretation of the conscientious objection clause in the Abortion Act 1967. Overturning the Inner House of the Court of Session’s ruling, the Court held that two Catholic midwives could be required by their employer to delegate to, supervise and support other staff who were involved in carrying out abortion procedures, as part of their roles as Labour Ward Co-ordinators at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow.

We set out the background to the case and explained the earlier rulings and their ramifications on this blog here and here. The key question the Supreme Court had to grapple with the meaning of the words “to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection” in section 4 of the 1967 Act.

The disappearing Article 9 argument

Somewhat frustratingly (at least from the perspective of the writers of a human rights blog!) an argument based around Article 9 of the European Convention – the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – was not really dealt with by the Supreme Court, despite having been trailed in the earlier court proceedings. Lady Hale JSC, who wrote the judgment with which the other Supreme Court Justices agreed, described the point as a “distraction” . . . [Full text]

 

Canadian Medical Association says it’s getting ready for legalized euthanasia, but critics say it is pushing it

LifeSite News

Steve Weatherbe

The Canadian Medical Association says it is preparing for the Supreme Court of Canada going either way with its imminent decision on whether or not to legalize euthanasia. But a Vancouver member says the CMA is actually pushing assisted suicide and euthanasia despite the wishes of its membership.

In a front-page article in the National Post, the CMA’s director of ethics, Dr. Jeff Blackmer, is quoted as saying, “We’re preparing for all eventualities and that [lifting the ban] is absolutely one of them.”

According to the Post, part of the CMA’s preparation for “all eventualities” is to survey how medical professions in a half-dozen U.S. states have responded to legalization. “What has worked, what hasn’t worked and how Canada can learn from those experiences,” Blackmer told the Post. Also consulted were countries that have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.

Blackmer did not report that the CMA consulted any of the vast majority of countries or U.S. states, which still criminalize these two procedures, to see what can be learned from their experience. . .

. . . But not everyone sees the CMA’s process as an even-handed one. The CMA “is really pulling a fast one,” said Will Johnson, a family doctor who is head of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of British Columbia. “It’s run by people who want assisted suicide and euthanasia and they are purporting a big change in the views of doctors on this. If they were sincere they would hold a referendum.” [Full text]

 

Canadian doctors preparing for ‘all eventualities’ in case top court strikes down ban on assisted suicide

National Post

Sharon Kirkey

The nation’s largest doctors’ group is quietly preparing for possible changes in federal laws governing physician-assisted death, as support among its own members for medical aid in dying grows.

The Canadian Medical Association has consulted medical associations in jurisdictions around the world where euthanasia or assisted suicide is legal to devise possible protocols for Canada if the federal law is changed.

The powerful doctors’ lobby says it would be naïve not to prepare for “all eventualities” as the country awaits a Supreme Court of Canada ruling over whether the federal prohibition outlawing assisted suicide is unconstitutional.

“I think we’re looking at the possibility that the court will refer this back to the lawmakers,” said Dr. Jeff Blackmer, the CMA’s director of ethics.

The Supreme Court could strike down Canada’s ban on assisted suicide and give Parliament one year to craft new legislation, as it did with prostitution.

“They could suggest some framework from the bench that we might want to be in a position to comment on fairly quickly. Or there could be a long period for reflection and committee hearings that we would want to be prepared for,” Blackmer said. “We’re preparing for all eventualities, and that [a lifting of the ban] is absolutely one of them.”

If there is a change in law, Blackmer said doctors opposed to physician-assisted death “will be looking to us for protection of their conscience and their right not to participate.” . . . [Full text]